James Gurney

This daily weblog by Dinotopia creator James Gurney is for illustrators, plein-air painters, sketchers, comic artists, animators, art students, and writers. You'll find practical studio tips, insights into the making of the Dinotopia books, and first-hand reports from art schools and museums.

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or by email:gurneyjourney (at) gmail.comSorry, I can't give personal art advice or portfolio reviews. If you can, it's best to ask art questions in the blog comments.

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All images and text are copyright 2015 James Gurney and/or their respective owners. Dinotopia is a registered trademark of James Gurney. For use of text or images in traditional print media or for any commercial licensing rights, please email me for permission.

However, you can quote images or text without asking permission on your educational or non-commercial blog, website, or Facebook page as long as you give me credit and provide a link back. Students and teachers can also quote images or text for their non-commercial school activity. It's also OK to do an artistic copy of my paintings as a study exercise without asking permission.

Friday, November 30, 2012

(Video link) A cheetah running full speed covers about 22 feet during each stride. Notice how the head stays steady as the rest of the body moves around its cycle.

(Video link) This video shows how the photographers got the shots. They built a long dolly track at the Cincinnati Zoo, with a slow motion camera following the cheetah. The trainers worked with the animal to be sure she didn't get distracted.
------More at National Geographic

Thursday, November 29, 2012

The word "grotesque" is related to the Italian word "grotta," a crypt or cave ornamented with fanciful forms.

It's the same Latin root where we get "grotto." The derivation traces back to the accidental discovery in the late 15th century of elaborately decorated underground rooms from the ancient Roman times. According to Wikipedia:

The "caves" were in fact rooms and corridors of the Domus Aurea, the unfinished palace complex started by Nero after the Great Fire of Rome in AD 64, which had become overgrown and buried, until they were broken into again, mostly from above. Spreading from Italian to the other European languages, the term was long used largely interchangeably with arabesque and moresque for types of decorative patterns using curving foliage elements.

Throughout the Baroque, Mannerist, and Victorian times, people built artificial grottoes (or "grotte") to stimulate the imagination.

We painters can learn a lot from photographers, who need to be keenly aware of the properties of light.

(Video link) In this video, Karl Taylor explains hard light, soft light, magic hour light, and reflected light.
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My book, Color and Light, also covers these points. You can get a copy signed by me, or from Amazon.

Monday, November 26, 2012

Here are some pen and marker sketches for the cover of James Blaylock's 1984 science fiction novel "Digging Leviathan." Blaylock was one of the originators of the "steampunk" movement.

The fish-shaped digging machine was made from spare parts found around the house: a garbage can, a roller skate, a brace and bit, a bicycle, some shovels, and an old umbrella. The character was inspired by the "subterranean prospector" device that he read about in E. R. Burroughs' novel "At the Earth's Core."

While still in the idea generating stage, I find it helps to draw something over and over again, because each time new ideas emerge. The final cover was a combination of the best of these sketches.

Sunday, November 25, 2012

This little study of a seated man by Charles Bargue (1826/7-1883) has some interesting tonal decisions.

The values are carefully grouped and controlled. In the left side of the jacket, for instance, he didn't overdefine the modeling on the light side, allowing all those light tones to group together into a larger shape.

The darks are also grouped, so that the face in shadow joins at the chin with the dark shirt-front, and the knuckles link up with the blue cloth and the legs into a bigger unit.

The study is also a great example of the "windmill principle," a tonal scheme where the figure/ground relationship includes all four basic possibilities:
1. Light against dark (knee at far right and bottom of jacket)
2. Dark against light (head)
3. Dark against dark (area around hands)
4. Light against light (shoulder and back)

Friday, November 23, 2012

Schoty and his Ankylosaurus pal Soroban help merchants with their arithmetic using a giant abacus mounted on Soroban’s back. Schoty can reach out with his wooden stick to move the red beads back and forth within the wooden frame. The abacus here resembles the Chinese version, though other kinds of abacuses occur elsewhere in the world. In fact the names “Schoty” and “Soroban” are the Russian and Japanese words for “abacus.”

Kim Jung Gi puts in another solid performance, this time with a Pentel brush pen, drawing bikers, babes, pigs, tigers, and a Monkey King on a big blank sheet of paper with no lay-in. The time lapse film has no sound, and I wish the camera operator had been a little smoother with the moves.
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Previously: Kim Jung Gi

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

DreamWorks Animation has a comprehensive in-house training program which provides a lot of resources for their artists. They provide every incoming artist with a list of the books and resources that they have found most helpful for mastering the art of animation.

DreamWorks has generously allowed me to share this recommended list with you. The links take you to more information about each of the books. If the resources are not books, I've added a note about where the links will take you.